The “Indiatech” lobby of Indian-born startups, led by Sachin Bansal of Flipkart and Bhavish of Ola has got a new backer – Softbank (which is also an investor in these companies).
“SoftBank is one of the several other investors including Matrix and Kalaari in Indian internet businesses such as Ola, Flipkart and Hike, which is supporting Indiatech. Our intent is to work with the government to support the development of the rapidly evolving internet ecosystem in the country and we hope the organisation would facilitate this” (source)
The Indiatech group aims to raise issue about ‘capital dumping’ by MNC players, which they believe leads to unfair play.
From our earlier coverage on this issue:
Agree that we need to do something about foreign competition (?), but are we also protecting Indian companies against well-funded Indian companies? The latest example being Abof – they aimed for profitability, but couldn’t stand against the discount-led competition.
Where will we draw the line? And are global companies just about more $$ (and not better products / efficient operations) ?
Who are the ‘local’ and ‘foreign’ players in this bloodbath? How do we define ‘local’ companies when Chinese investors own more than 60% of the top startups.
https://www.nextbigwhat.com/indian-startups-foreign-competition-297/
